Corporal Nym

In sack let me swim!
Gadshill and Peto-
Sweet wag! take our veto.
Motley too-

My cockscomb to you!
Good Justice Shallow-
I'm true to you, 'Tallow!'
Sir Andrew, Sir Hugh-
We'll drink as you brew!
Poins joins! Hal shall!

Dame Partlet the hen! Doll! Francis!—

Anon!

We're all your liege subjects, right glorious Sir John!

The lawyer's head and the shark's head,
The puritan parson's and clerk's head,
Are all very well

For a shot or a shell,
Exceedingly fit

To fill up a pit!

But the head that was reared
When Christmas cheered,

In the rollicking, frolicking days of yore,
When the Lord of Misrule,

The Friar and Fool,

With Robin and Marian, led the brawl,

And the hobby-horse frisked in the old-fashioned hall,
Was the wassailing Head of the bristly Boar!

FALSTAFF, NYM,

GADSHILL, PETO,
AND BARDOLPH.

PRINCE & POINS.

TOUCHSTONE.

CHORUS.

We are minions of the moon,
Doughty heroes, hot for fight!
May a cloud her brightness shroud,
And help us to a purse to-night.
Buckramed varlets! coward knaves!
Angels, watches, rings unfob!—

Up with staves, and down with braves-
We true men the robbers rob!

Mistress Audrey, in the dance,
With your love-lorn swain advance.
Though our carpet's not so sheen
As shady Arden's forest green,
And the lamps are not so bright
As chaste Luna's silver light,
Nor our company so gay
As when trips the sprightly fay,
I will dance, and I will sing,
Mingling in the laughing ring.

Shout for the Head of the bristly Boar!
Jovial spirits, as we are now,

Did merrily bound while the cup went round
Under the holly and misletoe bough.

Sing O the green holly! sing O the green holly!
Nothing's so sweet as divine melancholy.
Ingratitude blighting true friendships of old,
No bleak winter wind is so bitter and cold.

The room now seemed to extend in width and in length; the sounds of revelry ceased, and other characters appeared upon the scene. Lady Macbeth, her eyes bending on vacancy, her lips moving convulsively, her voice audible, but in fearful whispers, slept her last sleep of darkness, guilt, and terror. The Weird Sisters danced round their magic cauldron, hideous, anomalous, and immortal! The noble Moor ended 'life's fitful season,' remorseful and heart-broken. The Majesty of buried Denmark' revisited the pale glimpses of the moon.' Ariel, dismissed by Prospero, warbled his valedictory strain, and flew to his bright dwelling, under the blossom that hangs on the bough.' The chiefs and sages of imperial Rome swept along in silent majesty. Lear, on his knees, bareheaded, with heavenward eye, quivering lip, and hands clasped together in agony, pronounced the terrible curse, and in his death realized all that can be imagined of human woe. Shylock, the representative of a once despised and persecuted race, pleaded his cause before the Senate, and lost it by a quibble. Oberon, Puck, and the ethereal essences of a Midsummer Night's Dream flittered in the moonbeams. Benedick and Beatrice had their wars of wit, and combats of the tongue. The Lady Constance, alternately reproachful, despairing, and frenzied, exhibited a matchless picture of maternal tenderness. Juliet breathed forth her sighs to the chaste strs, Isabella read a lesson to haughty authority, when she asks her brother's forfeited life at the hands of the Duke, that holy seer or sage has seldom equalled, and never surpassed ;* and Ophelia, in her distraction, was simple, touching, and sublime.

Though these soul-stirring scenes were perfectly familiar to Uncle Timothy, and from youth to age had been his morning study and his nightly dream, they had never been invested with such an absorbing reality before, and he stood transfixed, a wondering spectator of the glorious vision, for such to his aching sight it seemed to be. At this moment, the embroidered arras that hung before the oriel window of the tapestried chamber was slowly drawn aside, and the figure of Shakspeare, his eyes beaming with immortality, and his lofty brow discoursing of all things past, present, and to come, stood revealed to view! Flowers of all hues, and without thorn the rose,' sprung up spontaneously beneath. his feet.

And as he walk'd along th' enamell'd bed
Of flow'rs, disposed in many a fairy ring,
Celestial music answer'd to his tread,

As if his feet had touch'd some hidden spring
Of harmony-so soft the airs did breathe

In the charm'd ear-around-above-beneath!

An eminent dignitary of the Church of England was once discoursing with the anthor on the morality of Shakspeare. He regretted that the Bard had not spoken on that most glorious of all subjects, Man's Redemption, beyond a few lines (exquisitely beautiful) in the first scene of Hamlet. The author immediately pointed out the following terse, but transcendant passage from Measure for Measure.'

'Why, all the souls that were, were forfeit once;

And HE that might the 'vantage best have took,
Found out the remedy.'

It would pass the bounds of the most exalted eulogy to record the prelate's answer, and how deeply affected he was whilst making it.

VOL. VII.

33

He spoke but his voice was of 'no sound that the earth knows.' The sensations of Uncle Timothy grew intensely painful-amounting almost to agony. He made a sudden effort to rush forward,-and in making it awoke! when he found himself seated snugly in an arm-chair before a bright sea-coal fire,' at the Mother Red Cap, where he had fallen asleep after the exit of the Bartholomew Fair troop, in their progress to the 'Rounds.'

And thus ended Uncle Timothy's Vision of the Boar's Head!

CHAPTER XIV.

'GENTLEMEN, on this anniversary of St. Bartholomew, let us not forget that we owe his fair to a priest and a jester.'

A priest and a jester, Mr. Merripall?-ha! ha! ho!'

'In sooth, Brother Stiflegig,' replied the comical coffin-maker to his inquiring mute, whose hollow laugh sounded like a double knock, and the devout monk is no more to be blamed for the disorders that, fungus-like, have grown out of it, than is Sir Christopher Wren for the cobwebs and dust that deface the dome of St. Paul's. Brush away the cobwebs and the dust, but spare the dome. Don't cut off a man's head to

cure his toothache, or lop off his leg to banish his gout in toto!'

The latter clause of this remark was much applauded by a sensitive member who had evinced great anxiety to protect his physiognomy from the cutting draught of the door; and by another, who was equally careful to keep his ten toes from being trod upon. But the sexton and the two mutes exchanged significant glances, that plainly hinted their non-approval of this anti-professional ultra-liberality on the part of the comical coffinmaker.

'Gentlemen,' resumed Mr. Merripall, rising

We were passing by those ancient houses in Duke Street, Smithfield, undecided whether or not to drop in upon the little Drysalter, when our attention was arrested by this chorus of mirth proceeding from one of the many obscure hostelries with which these ancient turnings and windings abound. We had stumbled on the Pig and Tinder-box, near Bartholomew Close. The chair was on his legs,

an exceedingly long pair, in black stockings,-leading a loud cheer. Mr. Merripall, the comical coffin-maker, was president of the Antiqueeruns. On each side of him sat his two mutes, Messrs. Hatband and Stiflegig; the sexton, Mr. Shovelton, by virtue of his office, was vice; the rest were tradesmen in the neighbourhood, to whom porter, pipes, punch, purl, pigtail, and politics were a pleasing solace after the business of the day; and a warlike character was given to the club by the infusion of some of the Honourable the Artillery Company, and the angel visits' of a city-marshal. Its name, though implying the reverse of a jest, had its origin in a joke, arising from the ludicrous mispronunciation of a member, to whom a little learning had proved a dangerous thing. This intelligent brother, at the christening of the club, moved that it be called the Antiqueeruns,' from the antiquity of their quarter and quality, which was carried, as he triumphantly announced, my ninny contra decency!' (nemine contradicenti ?) A palpable misnomer,-for the quorum consisted of the queerest fellows imaginable, and their president, Mr. Merripall, was a host in fun.

6

Our entrance had not been noticed during their upstanding jollity; but now, when every member was seated, we became the observed of all observers.'

'Spies in the camp!' growled a priggish person of punchy proportions, with a little round dumpling head, and short legs, whose pompous peculiarities had been sorely quizzed by some prying penny-a-liner. I move, Mr. Cheer, that our fifteenth rule be read by the vice.'

·

'Spies in the camp, Mr. Allgag!-pooh! Yet what signifies, if there's no treason in it? The gentlemen have only mistaken a private room for a public one.'

'It's all very well, Mr. President, for you to say there was no malice aforethought to broil us on their penny gridiron, when these people popped in upon us whipsy dicksy (ipse dixit?) and unawars. But' (rapping the table) 'we live in an age of spies and spinnage!' (espionage?)

Gammon and spinnage!' chuckled the comical coffin-maker. 'Order! order!' from several voices.

The Cheer is out of order! A gentleman don't oughtn't to be interrupted will he nil he, vie et harness (vi et armis?). Who seconds my motion?'

I,' winked the sexton. 'Then we'll put it to the vote, hold up your hands.'

As many of you as are of this opinion

Mr. Allgag, though an oyster in intellect, was the small oracle of an insignificant, captious, factious section of the Antiqueeruns. A few hands were held up, and the fulminating fifteenth rule was read aloud, which imposed a fine of five shillings on each intruder, and a forcible ejection from the room.

'I really blush for these pitiful proceedings,' exclaimed the comical coffin-maker; and rather than become a party to them, I will vacate the chair.'

'Well and good! I'll be your locum trimmings,' (tenens?) rejoined the Holborn Hill Demosthenes; and he half strutted, half waddled from his seat, as if to take possession. The two mutes looked grave; even the rebellious vice was panic-struck at the prodigious boldness of Mr. Allgag. I'll take the cheer. As for the turning out part of the story

Who talks of turning out?' cried the Laureat of Little Britain, bursting suddenly into the room. Is it you?' addressing the affrighted sexton, who shook his head ruefully in the negative; or you? advancing to the terrified mutes, who shook in their shoes. Not you! good Master Merripall,' giving the comical coffin-maker a hearty shake by the hand. Or is it you, sir?' placing himself in a provokingly pugnacious attitude before the Holborn Hill Demosthenes. What a bluster about an unintentional intrusion! If, gentlemen, my friends must be fined, I will be their guarantee.'

So saying, he ejected us with gentle violence from the room, and in a few minutes after we found ourselves in his elegant little library, where everything was as neat and prim as himself,—not a bust, bijou, or book out of its place.

A heavy retribution had well nigh fallen upon you, my good friends, for passing my door without looking in. It matters not what chance-medley brought me to your rescue; but I'm a merciful man, and the only fine I impose is, that you sit down, be comfortable, and stay till I turn you out.'

The fine seemed so very moderate, that we were glad to compromise.

Everything around you,-books, plate, pictures, china,-ay, my old-fashioned housekeeper into the bargain,-are the selection of Uncle Tim.'

too.'

And by this beeswing, Mr. Bosky, we guess Uncle Timothy is butler Yonder,' pointing to an antique painted

Most profoundly opined! glass door, 'is his cabinet

"There Caxton sleeps, with Wynkyn at his side,
One clasp'd in wood, and one in strong cow-hide."

An odd thought strikes me. What say you to a seasonable dish of conjurors, with a garnish of monsters and mountebanks, served up by mine host of St. Bartlemy, Uncle Tim? And Mr. Bosky disappeared through the glass door, but returned in an instant, bearing in his hand a smartly-bound volume. Shall I unclasp the Merry Mysteries of Bartlemy Fair, the ancient Records of the Rounds? You may go farther and fare worse.'

We want no whetters or provocatives, Mr. Bosky.'

Well, seeing that, like Justice Greedy, you long to give thanks and

fall to, my musical grace shall not be a tedious one.

'Our host, Uncle Tim, does the banquet prepare,

An Olla Podrida of Bartlemy Fair!

Ye lovers of mirth, eccentricity, whim,

Fill a glass to the health of our host, Uncle Tim.

And when you have filled, O! dismiss from your mind
Whatever is selfish, ungrateful, unkind;

Let gentle humanity rise to the brim,

And then, if you please, you may toast Uncle Tim.

You need not be told that the wine must be old,

As sparkling and bright as his wit and his whim ;

Of clear rosy hue, and generous too.

Like the cheek and the heart of our friend, Uncle Tim!